Make a mini chair for Marvel Studio’s Ant-man and the Wasp to use while they are small. Or make one of these miniature director’s chairs to add to your fairy garden.
Ant-man and the Wasp
Ant-man and the Wasp is such a fun superhero/heist movie with non-stop action, tons of comedy, and even a little romance. It’s got the pacing of a heist movie with the fun characters from the Marvel Universe. I haven’t laughed that much in a movie in a long time. And even though it is made for an adult audience, it’s clean enough that I’m okay with my older kids watching it.
Just a heads up, you don’t need to see the Avengers: Infinity War before this movie, but the movie will make a lot more sense if you see the first Ant-man. And watching Captain America Civil War first would probably help too.
When I first saw the teaser trailer for Ant-man and the Wasp, I was excited to see the movie because I liked the first one, but I also loved the mini director’s chairs at the end of the trailer. I had to make them. Plus, they work perfectly in a fairy garden.
How to Make a Mini Chair
I used Wooden Sandwich Picks to make the miniature chairs. You can buy a box of 750 for pretty cheap and have lots of little wood pieces to make many more miniature projects. You could make smaller chairs using flat toothpicks and making the lengths half as long. My chair is about 3 1/2 inches tall.
The wooden sandwich picks have a pointed end and a rounded end. I cut both ends off and used the center 2 inches for almost all of my pieces. That way I had fairly straight pieces of wood to work with. I used the rounded ends for the arms of the chair.
Cut List
- 4 2-inch pieces
- 2 1 1/2-inch pieces
- 6 1-inch pieces
- 2 7/8-inch pieces
- 2 3/4-inch pieces
- 2 1-inch pieces with rounded ends for the arms
- 1 piece cut-to-size later for the foot rest
I used gardening shears to cut the pieces of wood. You could also use wire cutters, an X-acto knife, or even a pair of scissors. It’s very thin wood.
I also suggest using a foam mat or other surface that glue doesn’t stick well to. I used a cutting mat, which really helped me to make the parts of the chair square, so the chair didn’t end up twisting strangely.
Use plenty of white school glue to attach the pieces together. I tried just using a little glue so it didn’t show, but the pieces fell apart. Plus, white school glue dries clear, so you don’t see it anyway. You could use a glue gun, but that can get really messy. It would be faster, though. I took a whole day to make the chair, gluing each part and then waiting for it to dry before gluing the next piece on.
Make the Legs of the Mini Chair
To create the legs of the director’s chair, I made two rectangles and then crossed them together. Each rectangle is made with 2-inch sides and a 1-inch piece across the top. The thin side of the 2-inch wood is glued onto the flat side of the 1-inch piece.
Next, glue the 7/8-inch piece onto the 1-inch piece, between the long pieces. It would look best if you could get it to stick at the top the 1-inch piece, but I was just happy to get it to stick on.
Then add another 1-inch piece across the top of the 2-inch pieces near the other end. But only do this for 1 set of legs. Leave it off the other legs, otherwise you won’t be able to cross the two legs together. I made that mistake the first time making this and had to pull that piece off.
When you have one rectangle, and one almost-rectangle, glue the legs together criss-cross about 2/3 of the way down the rectangles. I used binder clips to help them together until the glue dried.
Now add the last pieces (1-inch long) across near the bottom of whichever side is missing it.
Make the Seat and Back of the Mini Chair
For the seat and back of the director’s chair, use a 1 1/2-inch piece and a 1-inch piece to make an L. Then make another L to same way.
Then glue a 3/4-inch piece about 2/3 of the way out from the angle of the L. This is the brace for the arm.
Finally, glue the rounded piece onto the brace to form the arm of the chair.
For the “fabric” parts of the seat and back, I used paper. I printed out two rectangles to look like the chairs in the teaser trailer. The seat rectangle is 1-inch by 1 3/8-inches and the back rectangle (with the name on it) is 5/8-inch by almost 2 inches. The back is longer than the chair is wide so it can wrap around the back.
Glue the wood parts onto the sides of the seat “fabric.” They should fit the width exactly.
Then carefully fit the seat back “fabric”—with the name on it— across the back of the chair and fold it around the sides. I fit and folded it before I added glue.
A Director’s Chair for Ant-man
Glue the top of the chair to the bottom of the chair.
For the footrest, cut the last piece of wood a little longer than the width of the legs just below where they cross. Glue on the footrest.
And now you have a perfect-sized chair for Ant-man to watch a movie on a laptop computer. Make a second chair for the Wasp.
You could even use these for your favorite action figures. Add extra glue everywhere if they are going to be played with much, though.
A Fairy Garden Chair
We made a cute chair for our fairy garden the same way, only we used a couple of little leaves for the seat and back of the chair. We used real leaves, so they didn’t last long. Silk leaves would probably have worked just as well and been more permanent. 